Sen and Roubani perform an exorcism on the Kharon's virus-ridden code.

Date:

PHD035

Related Logs:

Related Logs (Say None if there aren't any; don't leave blank)

Players:

....

Kharon - Aerospace Fabrication

And this is why Aero Fab is really Aero FABULOUS. Okay, maybe not…but it still gets Roubani's respect, and not just a little fascination. He's in his blues with the jacket open, probably an 'off-duty' signal though it's hard to tell. He reports in at the time he said he would, dark eyes searching the huge bay but already know where they need to end up. He heads for Sen and her jungle.

Sen glances up as if sensing a disturbance in the force, glancing over her shoulder as she hears his quiet foot steps. There's little other noise in here right now, besides her breathing and the quiet hum of the computer as it starts to life. "Ensign. You're just in time. I was just going to page you. This is Petty Officer Silva. She'll be helping us. You." She motions to the quiet woman next to her, sitting in the matching chair. Sen stands from hers, offering it to Roubani. "Two clean machines." She holds up an external hardrive. "And the code from the Kharon. Ready to slay this beast?"

Roubani looks at the computer screen as Sen introduces someone else. Then he seems to realise no, it's not just a pet name for the console, and he looks at the young women instead. "P.O." A polite nod, then he immediately looks a little stricken when the Captain gives up her chair. "I can stand sir, it's fine." He gives the machines a once over. "Ready as I suppose we'll ever be. Which will just have to be good enough."

Sen grins slightly. "Sit. I have a feeling you'll be better suited for electronic warfare than I am." She moves over to the P.O.'s terminal hooking up the external drive. As the two consoles are linked together, the pair can share the problem solving together. "Alright. Let's open this puppy up and see if we can yank it out by it's hindlegs or if we're going to have to burn it out like a tick. Did you know there are over eight hundred and fifty tick species?" She asks casually, leaning over the P.O. to input a few keystrokes to get them going.

"I do now, sir. But it's one species that I can honestly say," Roubani answers, drily amused, "That I don't miss." He finally settles into the chair, resting his elbows on theconsole edge and peering at the screen. A computer science major he was not, but he can recognise those code threads he saw in the Viper systems - systems which he does know like the back of his hand. This could be fodder for all sorts of bad humour about 'this is how nerds share sensitive materials, hyuck', but none of it seems to occur to the pilot. His eyes just start to flicker back and forth, looking at the long strings of code. "Gods, this is fascinating."

Sen takes a step back, letting the pair watch the spooling lines of code. One sequence in particular seems to occur over and over again, looping through the Kharon's original code that was in the Vipers as well. Sen merely watches over them, sipping from a cup of coffee that's undoubtedly fueled her through this entire ordeal. "Yeah, but fascinating in a 'gods I want it to die' way, right?" She asks casually.

Roubani's fingers busily tap the keys as he works, able to see the P.O.'s progress on his screen as well. "More fascinating in a 'Gods, wouldn't it be brilliant if we could turn it right back on them' way."

Sen folds an arm across her stomach, the other still propped to deliver coffee to her mouth when needed. "Well, then instead of obliterating it, let's see if we can separate it out, and save a copy. But right now our priority is getting it out of our mainframe so we can fuction again." She leans over the P.O. pointing something out that her eyes caught, but Silva missed.

"Understood." Roubani glances at Silva's screen and then back at his, adjusting something on his console to account for the changed data. "Alright…" He taps his finger against the side of the console screen. "P.O., let's do a runback to Matrix 138-B. Run functions SHA-1 and MD7 on every valid corner and let's see what we can flush out."

Sen starts pacing behind the two, like an expectant father forced to stay out in the waiting room while the little bundle of joy is squirted out. She starts to gnaw on her thumbnail, pausing behind Roubani. "Cross that with the auxillary pattern buffer. See if that's what's transmitting across our omni-processory."

Roubani's knowledge of how all this works is based far more on his mathematics knowledge than that of computers, per se. One can almost see the gears turning with some smoke as he translates from comp sci to maths in his head, and back. Lines of code start scrolling at high speeds across their screens, superimposed over 3-D representations of the mainframe sectors they're tapping into. On the right side of each screen is a similar "picture" of the Viper computer systems, the entire setup checking and crosschecking data. "Well, it's not a preimage attack." He sucks the corner of his lip between his teeth and leans forward, peering at the screen. "Here's evidence of those transmissions, but whatever this is is quite adept at covering its tracks. Oh, this is nasty…look, Captain. See this HMAC detail right here? Do you think we could lock this down and trace it from here?"

Sen nods slowly with Roubani's words, keeping her eyes glued to the screen for a moment. Then she nudges the PO out of her seat and takes over. "You know. When I was a kid." She talks while she types, bringing up a secondary window where she inputs some quick computations. "These sorts of things were so much simpler." Tap tap. "Alright. Let's run this…"

"I remember when message integrity meant the pigeon didn't get lost," Roubani says, mournfully, then pauses. "Alright, no I don't. But it must have been awfully less frustrating." He settles his fingers back on the keys and gets to work diligently, eyes glancing between keyboard and screen (mostly on the screen) as tappity tapping commences.

Leaving the P.O. to be the one pacing now, Sen has fully commendeared the keyboard and is trying to work in tandem with Roubani. The problem with the Captain is she's adequate in a lot of areas, but not really proficient in any. She actually is getting lucky when she pulls up a command prompt to bring up the pattern buffer, and pieces of information are getting pulled out to give them a bigger picture of the issue. "Until your pigeons decide pooping on a statue is more interesting…"

The humour goes past Roubani as his eyes are on the screen and brows drawn. He makes a softly frustrated sound, quickly tapping one of the keys. Which doesn't work, so he starts typing at top speed, trying to head off the avalanche on the monitor. "Sir…this sector's no longer running. These are errors that weren't there a minute ago."

Sen mutters cuss words underneath her breath that start to sound like a mantra. She glances over to his screen, before typing a few buttons to get the same string of data pulled up onto her screen. That's as far as she gets, as the data just continues to further corrupt itself. If they were working on the actual database instead of just a copy, likely they would be losing something vital about now. Like their ability to control the life support system.

Roubani lets the engineer engineer. His eyes jump from one string of their code to the next, examining it in the way some people stood and watched stock tickers go by on Caprica's Wall Street. Indeed, thank goodness they made copies so they could have practice runs like this, and not kill everyone. His dark eyes narrow a little, brows drawing, and he reaches over for his calculator. Only a few keys get punched in, some function ran - most of the math flies by in his head. "It's a ran-com failure," he finally announces. "Deletions and insertions…look." He grabs a pencil, scribbling down four long equations in a cascade down the page. "This seems to be the pattern."

Sen cranes over to look at the equations that Roubani sets down to paper, her eyes quickly scan over the paper even as he writes, "That's it..that's it..THAT'S IT!" She proclaims, excitement clear on her face. The chase is almost over, and with renewed energy, she goes back to her keyboard. "Now that this bastard has shown his face we should be able to…" Clack clack clack. "…make him wish he never left his momma's teet…" She's too enthralled with her work to mind her tongue, and later she'd likely denied she spoke so crudely. "Shit. It's pulling the virus out, but it's tearing chunks of data with it."

Roubani glances at Sen mildly at her language. Luckily he has no soap handy. And she outranks him and stuff. He folds his arms on the desk, content for a few minutes just to watch what she does with the data he gave her - trying to learn, as it is. When she announces the new problem, he rubs his temple. "Can it be rebuilt? The data it's tearing out, that is."

Sen exhales a long breath that makes an errant curl of hair billow out, then shift back against her forehead. "Not unless one of my grunts ends up being a programming genius. Certainly isn't me. Maybe we'll be able to piece it back together over time…" She leans back from the computer, error messages flashing repeatedly. But they know the problem now, that was the biggest step, now they can protect the older version of the database from being corrupted by the same demon.

Roubani folds his arms, also watching the errors on her screen. There's a thoughtful frown on his face, steadily tensing the corners of his mouth. "I'm glad it'll work one way or another, sir…" Now it's in her people's hands, but he's not quite done. "I suppose that leaves us with two major question. Number one, how this was transmitted in the first place, and number two, the weakness in our system that it exploited. The latter may be easier to figure out than the former, as if it was capable of attacking both Viper and Kharon systems then what really needs to be done is a comparison of the security holes in the two. Where they overlap, somewhere is our answer."

Sen pushes back from the console, taking a deep breath as if this exertion was just as much physical as it was mental. "It could have been implemented all the way back when the Kharon was still in dock getting upgraded…" She speculates into the depths of her coffee cup before she takes another sip. "Maybe the only purpose was to cause chaos."

"The only way to know that is to look at the code itself," Roubani says. "And figure out what it was meant to do, ultimately. It may have had timed attacks, and on day one-hundred, shut down life support. It may have been programmed to shut down navigation if precautions weren't taking during the excising. We don't know without further examination, really."

Sen rubs at her temple with the heel of her hand. "We can run it through some scenarios. See what happens. What I'm more concerned with is preventing it from happening again. Why our failsafes didn't function and catch this earlier…"

Roubani nods slowly. His eyes stay on to his screen, if only to have something to look at while he thinks. "It could have exploited any number of bugs. Any system has weak points." He sounds bothered by it as much as she, though. "One of my questions is this - was it transmitted by the cylons in whole, or…was already /in/ our system and just…activated somehow by the enemy?" The latter, of course, opens up a graver can of worms.

Sen is still contemplating the state of her coffee cup, "These are all questions that will have to be raised in the next command meeting. Would you be willing to attend, if I speak with your CO prior?"

"I will attend whatever I'm directed to, sir," Roubani says, in that sort of zen that only comes with a low rank. They give order, he follows it.

Sen gives a grin, now that some of the stress is dissolving away. "How very magnanimous of you, Ensign." She reaches over, helping herself to the piece of paper he wrote on, containing the malicious bit of code on it. "We've done the hard part, now it's just a matter of tearing everything apart and building it back up again. We'll have to swap things out, do a hard reboot, and pray we can build a safety to catch this new bit of evil." She waves the piece of paper triumphantly. "Good work, Roubani."

Roubani smiles, politely. "You too, sir. If I may be that bold." He sits forward, letting his back relax a bit now that all that pressure's eased. "I suppose clearing the Vipers will be in deck's hands." Mildly disappointed, that. No more toys for you, go to your berthings. "I shall get a briefing ready about those questions we brought up and send it to you before the meeting, if you like."

Sen clunks her empty coffee mug back on the little terminal they have set up. "If the Deck Chief has questions, you'll be able to answer them just as easily as I would. Feel free to field any that she flies your way. A briefing would be fantastic. The more organized we can keep about this, the more efficiently we'll be able filter this through Command."

Roubani nods to that. "Yes, sir." His dark eyes turn towards where the Raider pieces sit in their secure area. "I'll be back down to keep looking at that…" He exhales quietly. "I have this feeling in my stomach that it's hiding so much."

Sen eases form her seat. "One thing at a time, that's the best we can do. Right now, I have to get back down to damage control with this new data, so we can stop having these annoying malfunctions. You're dismissed." She says casually, with a groan as she stretches sore muscles from being hunched over that computer for too long.

"Yes, sir." Roubani seems equally eager to get up out of that seat and stretch. He laces his hands behind his head, watching the ruined Raider as Sen heads off.